I would add that our action was not in the face of growing opposition, but a politically connected one. Neighborhood leadership consistently supported us, including a near unanimous vote of the SH neighborhood residential association and endorsement from Belle Isle, and the vast majority of people who we were able to meet with saw the logic behind the project and its reduction of intensity and traffic in exchange for a height increase to roughly the height of the building immediately bordering the north end of our site or approximately 1/3 of the height of the Sunset Harbour towers… We have withdrawn our proposal to focus our energies on enforcing our rights in the courts and re-examining development options within the current code. Sometimes a city code doesn’t allow for the optimal aesthetic or functional design, and laws are made with amendment processes so that we can explore better alternatives, but in this case we think the community as a whole will suffer from the greed of a few.

I have no clue why anyone, in any city, would fight against building UP versus building OUT. The most “green” city in the USA is New York. Why? Because they build UP, and reduce traffic with efficient public transportation. These weird “groups” that fight vertical development clearly do not care at all about the environment or how they are fighting to create more sprawl.

I LOVED the design of this project and was very excited about it. It fit perfectly into the neighborhood, and was one of the final pieces in the total gentrification of Sunset Harbour. If anything, it should have been TALLER.